Word: pompously
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Despite its sumptuous sets, the scene falls flat because it is peopled with characatures. The giggling girls, the pompous general, and the swooning old ladies could be taken from any number of films. And Visconti does not merely present them; he dwells on them. Moreover, he takes two of Lampedusa's most vivid characters and drams them of life. Don Calegro, the uneducated but shrewd mayor, becomes a drunken buffoon. Tancredi, the Prince's favorite, undergoes a rather obvious transition from youthful revolutionary to foppish conservative as the middle class reaction to change sets...
...have a feeling Miss McCarthy was once snubbed (being from Seattle and all) by a group similar to the one she depicts. Her mocking bitterness distorts her perception; the characters are not whole because they are almost always naive or pompous or absurd. I cannot attribute Miss McCarthy's lack of sympathy to her unrepentent realism (as Arthur Mizener did in The New York Times). She has a past history of carrying on personal vendettas in her published fiction, and I sense this is a grudge of long standing only now being extirpated...
Yesterday, for the first time in two months, I entered Widener, only to find that what some people jocosely term "progress" had swept over this bastion of learning. Gone were the little blue cards I had known and loved! In their place were IBM cards with the pompous instructions, PLEASE WRITE FIRMLY TO MAKE CARBON DO NOT BEND CARD...
From the beginning, Commencement in Cambridge has been an amusing combination of pompous ritual, serious academic dissertation, reunion with old associates, honors both earned and merely bestowed, and festive entertainments...
...house was easily imposing enough to induce such speculation. It stood at the top of a crest overlooking the Charles River with a large expanse of ground stretching before it and somehow had a way of appearing inordinately pompous whenever a Congregationalist should happen by. The neat rows of Ionic pilasters and windows, the classical doorway and the stately scale of the house, contributed to its attractiveness. Now the Master's Residence at Adams House, the building has lost its view of the river and most of its ground but its handsome interior and facade remain intact...